THE MAU FOREST 191 



acres to extensive glades, but everywhere walled-in solid 

 — no interval of scattered trees frinsfed them. The 

 game never entered these opens till after dark, and 

 quitted them before a sign of dawn had appeared. The 

 alternative was to try by full moonlight, and as that 

 period was due within a few days, we utilised the 

 interval by a journey towards the Sotik country. 



This is a region of wondrous virgin wood ; but 

 impressions of these Central-African forests can hardly 

 be conveyed in words, though Stanley and other vivid 

 writers have described them. It is the sense that one 

 feels rather than actually sees, since all beyond the 

 narrowest limit is shut out from view by tier upon tier 

 of overarching foliage, pendent, prehensile, parasitic, and 

 upright. Hard by rise the bolls of colossal cedars,^ half 

 hidden amid enveloping evergreens and lianas ; yet their 

 summits, 200 ft. above, are away in another world — a 

 world of sunshine and blue sky beyond our view. Below, 

 all one sees in a half-light is a few yards of the bases, 

 soon to lose themselves, like pillars of the Mezquita, in 

 the vaulted roof overhead. 



Hour after hour one rides throuo-h these forest-aisles 

 overarched with leafage, dark and eerie as some cathe- 

 dral crypt, while the rarefied air chills to the marrow, 

 and the altitude, moreover (8,000 ft.), renders breathing 

 oppressive to man and beast alike. In gloomy recesses, 

 shut out for ever from the sun, grow ferns much as one 

 sees at home — bracken and blechnum, polypody, parsley- 

 fern and others ; besides brambles, ramps, primroses, 

 thistles and stiuo-ino'-uettles. 



There are moister dells where cedars and forest-trees 

 give place to dense growth of bamboos of such giant 

 dimensions that even their summits pass beyond our view, 

 towering up probably eighty feet or more. The grey 

 tree-moss, " old-man's beard," hangs in pendent festoons, 

 while an incessant siss-siss-siss of infinite insects and the 



^ Though they are called cedars, and their wood is reddish and of 

 the same sweet resinous smell as cedar, yet I believe these big trees 

 really belong to the Juniper family. 



